As Serbia goes to a run off election between the hardline Nationalists and the pro-EU party, on the day when America celebrates the legacy of MLK, and after an interesting debate with E about the Racino issue and racism towards Native Americans, I finally got a sit down with Dr. D to take a look at the thesis.
As it stands the thesis is something of a compromise between the initial idea/inspiration for the thesis, and Dr. B's interest in doing a field study, a personalized experience with soccer culture in a community/region where marginalized peoples engage in the game. This second part was an idea that we banded around a few months ago, but that I never really was able to develop fully in my head, at least as part of the thesis.
So today, we looked at what I was hoping to get out of this project. This is not a one off for me, but really just a first chapter/trip into this subject. Considering my basic time frame (the thesis technically being due in May), the praxis is becoming something of an issue. As it stands, I was going to look at a very general cross section of soccer players in the US, players from USM, from an indoor league, and from the pickup games at Back Bay. But this doesn't really look at the "at risk" demographic meant to be the subject of this thesis.
If I think back to Oggi's speech (almost a year ago now) what had me so crazy was the possibility that soccer was available for use as a means of conflict resolution, or as empowerment of minority/repressed/illegal/other/'immigrant' communities. Since then the paradoxical nature of this has become clear to me. That the nation state can also tap this source for its own designs, perpetuating racism, inequality, and power structures. In light of the current complaints coming from the larger EU clubs complaining that the African Nations Cup is taking away the African stars for the next few weeks; considering the debate over immigration currently in the EU, this might rather be the focus of the project.
So, the suggestion was to look at the paradox of a sport that on one side empowers these communities, and on the other, allow the Nation State to further its ambition of control and power. Instead of trying, at this juncture, to do some field study, focusing on the theory supported by examples to support either side of the argument. The question will be to see if this debate is sustainable, if the co-existence of these two antithetical ideas means soccer is inherently dangerous, or if the risk is acceptable?
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